README

== BCC DIY ==
A community-powered website for Birmingham City Council: http://bccdiy.com
The code here is a Ruby on Rails application that you can download and install on your own machine.
* Getting started *
This is a complicated project that relies on scraping data from the original site as its starting point.
I hope to write some instructions for setting up the site from scratch (and making this general for other council sites).
Check out the project, set up your database and install the required gems.
It includes several components that make up the site:
* A scraper, using class methods of the Page model.
* WIKI-style editing with OpenID-supported user authentication
* REST API for most models, outputting JSON and XML for nearly every page. Updating/deletion is supported via Basic Authentication, but PLEASE don't make any live edits on the site until we have looked at getting is_paranoid working.
* Integration with lots of useful services: Flickr, OpenlyLocal, FixMyStreet, Plings, Google Local Search, etc.
* About the code *
This is very rushed code. There are bound to be problems throughout, so please point them out!
We also have next to no unit tests written - so some help writing these would be great.
* What's next? *
We are updating the code daily with new features based on the ideas on the BCCDIY WIKI: http://bccdiy.pbworks.com
If you have an idea, discuss it there, have a go at implementing it.
Stef
@stef on Twitter
http://stef.io